The present invention relates generally to packet forwarding, and more specifically, to packet forwarding for quality of service delivery.
A computer network or data network is typically made up of nodes connected together by data links. These nodes are usually computer systems, such as personal computers, servers, and networking hardware (e.g., switches). Each of these computer systems sends and receives network packets to and from other computer systems within the computer network over a number of possible data links or network paths. A network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by the computer network. While the multiple data links and network paths are installed within a computer network for redundancy, these paths and links are not always of the same quality and speed.
Network traffic is the amount of data (packets) moving across the computer network at a given time. Network traffic can be sorted into different classes (types) with each network traffic class having different performance requirements and/or constraints. For example, storage area network (SAN) Volume Controller (SVC) global mirroring, which is a form of storage appliance-based data replication, requires a high amount of bandwidth in a high quality network with minimal dropouts and packet re-ordering to achieve a low recovery point objective (RPO). However, a host-based replication in which the replication emanates from the software of a server can tolerate a lower quality network. Initial replication typically requires large bandwidth but cannot tolerate a low latency, and a near-sync replication requires a large bandwidth and can tolerate a low latency.